RIFLE RANGE BOY

Madadayo ( まあだだよ   Not Yet, Japanese; 1993) Director: Akira Kurosawa This sombre offering is Kurosawa's swan song. Ironically, it is a comedy but the subject deals something as depressing as life after retirement, war and essentially waiting for death! If fact, the title of film is a joke often told the main character referring to his life whose time (end of it) has reached yet - not yet! Professor Uchida (whom his students address fondly as Sinsei) is a lovable German language professor in Japan who is at the tail end of his teaching career. It is set at a time just before the second World War. After his retirement, he continues entertaining his students at his humble home sharing his own trademark jokes. The students, even after growing old continue his acquaintance. Periodically, he gather for his birthday. They even help him out when his home is raged by shell after the war. The movie shows the cordial respect between teacher and student. Just when the student think the...

You think you have got it made. You think you are perfect. That is what everyone aims for. And we all yearn to be THE one. Many want to leave their legacy behind, something for their descendants to feel proud of. Mythology repeatedly told over time from ear to ear over the years, got spiced up and snowballed to portray infallible characters, invincible, just, powerful and elevated to demi-God and God statuses. As usual, my mind got thinking... That could explain the many 'great' men (mahaans) and avatars of God who had graced and walked the land we stand on. Not to belittle the great deeds that they had done, there must be blemishes in their otherwise pristine time on Earth. When Robin William passed on recently, the internet and social media were fluff with a flurry of messages praising him to high heaven. Many thanked him for the comedy and making the world a happier place. One even praised him in his role as a motivating teacher in 'Dead Poets Society'. If not for...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/ak-47-designer-kalashnikov-wrote-penitent-letter/2014/01/13/5f8463b2-7c72-11e3-97d3-b9925ce2c57b_story.html Vladimir Vyatkin, File/Associated Press -  FILE - In this Wednesday, Oct. 29, 1997 file photo Mikhail Kalashnikov shows a model of his world-famous AK-47 assault rifle at home in the Ural Mountain city of Izhevsk, 1000 km (625 miles) east of Moscow. The designer of the world’s most prolific firearm, the AK-47 assault rifle, has written a sorrowful letter to the Russian Orthodox Church’s head, asking if he’s to blame for the deaths of those killed by his creation. According to a Monday, Jan. 13, 2014 report in the daily Izvestia, several months before his death last month at age 94, Kalashnikov wrote to Patriarch Kirill that he keeps asking himself if he’s responsible for those deaths. By  Associated Press ,  Updated: Tuesday, January 14,  3:42 AM MOSCOW —  In a regretful letter penne...

"Daily Mail" True Crime: Classic, Rare and Unseen(2009) By Tim Hill Sometimes, we wonder why is it that, human beings have a fascination towards murder and other heinous crimes. Just have a look at almost all prime time TV shows. They all feature killings and evil as their central pillar. Anyway, with the blurring of what used to be prime time and since now TV is on 24/7 and is cheap and is available all rooms of the house (include the toilet), the concept of prime time where the whole family would sit together after their dinner is not existent. That propagated mini-series and soap operas that also include the above sins as well as other vices like infidelity, cheating and lying for good measure! In the old days when one has to wait a full week for his dose of crime, with the advent of cable TV, he is on a perpetual chronic overdose! In spite of the society's abhorrence to violence, the world we live in, animal or human kingdoms, is full of violence. In the ani...

Over the weekend, I met up with a friend who had moved into a spanking new house in the up-market part of town. After the usual cursory formalities and niceties, I had a chat with her father who had been diagnosed to have a serious heart ailment. YeaH iTs MY liFe..!!!!!!!!! (Bon Jovi) He is a 77-year-old man who, after the recent passing of his wife of almost 50 years, is living between her three daughters' houses at his own leisure. After striving hard to bring the bacon as a police officer through the hard times of the nation fighting bandits' intelligentsia throughout the country, he is glad that his three children are self-sufficient and independent. He feels that his life and duties on earth are done, and he is living on borrowed time! (Especially after being a chronic smoker of 50 sticks a day for 50 years until one fine day when he developed distaste to cigarettes upon completing pilgrimage to Holy Land). Perhap...